Thank you Chicago

I started this blog about three years ago, when I left San Francisco, my home of six years to go get my MA in London. When I returned the US rather than go back to San Francisco where I could probably now only afford a shoe box to live in, Mike and I decided to give Chicago a try. I had only spent a weekend of my adult life there, stopping by on a trip home to Michigan to see my grandma and explore with Mike. I think we were there for about 48 hours and pretty much only doing the typical touristy things.

Chicago made sense though, as the closest major city to my parents and sisters. It had all the things the two of us required -dance, pilates, a big body of water and major league baseball teams. (Can you guess whose concern that was?) It was nice after more than a decade away from the midwest to not be immediately called out on my accent, although that still happened here too.

I had an idea when I finished my MA that I might not be done with school and last fall I started the process of applying to PhD programs. At that point I’d been in Chicago about 9 months and although I liked it, I didn’t love it and certainly didn’t feel like it would be that hard to leave. Somehow between then and now Chicago really began to feel like home. I ended up working at two great pilates studios where I had amazing coworkers and really enthusiastic clients. I decided to produce a dance show -the first I have ever completely self produced- and in the process I met the most wonderful talented group of artists. Even just the process of looking for a theater was fun. I’d visit venues and if they weren’t right, they’d give me suggestions, point me towards other resources. Although I don’t have a Chicago show on the books now, I would love to do another show there because it was such a great experience the first time around. Thank you to everyone who was part of that process.

During this year in which Chicago really became my home I got accepted into the Critical Dance Studies PhD program at University of California Riverside and got engaged. So here I am, once again, with big changes on the horizon.

I read this article a few months back as I was getting ready to leave. It was written by someone leaving London which made me nostalgic for my brief time there but even more so made me think about my upcoming departure from Chicago, -particularly this quote “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

Thank you Chicago. I will miss you because of all the kind, fun, loving, wonderful people I met or reconnected with. (Polar vortex is not on this list.)

Writing / 2013 FLIES by

I’ve never thought of writing as one of my strengths so I’m finally doing something about it and taking a writing course. One of the first things my teacher said is that the best way to improve is practice. Pretty obvious. But then I thought, hey, I could practice writing on that blog of mine that I haven’t been on in a little while… try a really long while. I haven’t posted anything yet this year!

So what’s new? I’m in Chicago, teaching pilates at Harmony Mind Body Fitness and Spring Wellness Center. In March I became certified to teach TRX which I’m already doing at Harmony and have a class starting soon at Spring. At the end of this month I’ll get certified to teach cardiolates. After a year of focusing intently on making dances this past year has been more about getting back into my teaching.

I did take some time to choreograph a new piece which I performed in June. I’m trying to continue to develop the skills I started working on integrating video into my dance making.

Shift from Kelly Bowker on Vimeo.

In the process of developing this piece I remembered how much I hate choreographing on myself and I think not being able to see it from the outside compounds the problems when trying to add the video element. Goals for 2014 (aside from posting to my blog more than once) include finding some dancers to work with in the Chicago area.

D O N E

I handed my thesis in yesterday afternoon. The deadline was 3:30pm on Monday and I got my thesis to registry AT 3:30pm on Monday. No time to spare.

This is what four hours of sleep looks like.

It’s amazing how quickly the last few weeks flew by. Time may fly when you’re having fun, but I think it flies faster when you have a deadline looming ahead. It’s hard to believe I’ve been in London a little bit over a year. I’m glad that I did it, and glad that its done.

The next step will be to pack up my stuff and get ready for more traveling! I will try to post occasionally from the road but probably won’t get most of my photos up until I get back to the US in November. I’ll be on the road with Mike for a little over five weeks, we’ll see if we can manage it without killing one another. He’s been great the last few weeks here, helping keep me sane with all this writing. We’ve also managed to fit a few fun/touristy London moments in.

We went on a Jack the Ripper tour which of all the various tours I’ve done in this country was definitely the WORST.  Perhaps with a better guide it might have been better, ours basically just recited the facts and mimed slitting his throat about a million times. Mostly it was just a tour of parking garages and buildings which USED to be safe houses, brothels etc, so it took a bit of imagination to get in the spirit.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

A more positive experience was our visit to the Globe Theatre. We saw As You Like It and standing tickets were only 5 pounds. If I go back I’ll pay for the seats, standing through the play wasn’t ideal, but felt like the proper way to experience it, standing in front of the stage under the open sky. Thank goodness it didn’t rain for once.

Overall, its been a really good year. Not looking forward to packing everything up or saying the good byes, but glad for all the awesome people I’ve met this past year. Time for a few more adventures before returning to America.

Return to Reality

Project: finished!

Two week vacation to Spain: accomplished!

Thesis written: ….. not yet.

Right now I get to enjoy my last day of vacation watching the Olympic closing ceremony and think about all that I still need to get done. The good news is that in less than two months it’ll be done -good or bad and then I’ll be on to more traveling! Mike and I took 1400 photos over the course of 15 days.  Needless to say I haven’t gone through them all and probably won’t until after I finish the written thesis and the rest of my traveling.

For now here is a mini preview of what I saw and did in Spain and Portugal:

Barcelona – and a sea of people in the streets of the gothic neighborhood.

Lisbon -lots of cool architecture and artwork.

Madrid- Can you see how shiny we are … it was HOT there.

San Sebastian -lots of time on the beach and good food.

There’s the preview… the other 1396 photos to come later.

Countdown!

I show my final project in eight days! Doesn’t that mean I should be working on it?

Yes.

I am working… my video is rendering. And I am so antsy and wanting to do something productive that I am writing this post, while my computer works. If I REALLY really wanted to do something productive I would try to write my program note, but I won’t go that far right now.

and it is rendering….

and so this will probably be a disjointed post, but I figured it was either a bad post or none at all.

Also in just five days Mike will be here!

near Tower Bridge

He will probably have seen more of London than me by the time we leave. I am so excited to have him here but I will be running around trying to get my project together, trying to lend a hand to a few classmates, trying to see all my classmates work and celebrating the end of this current period of crazy. I guess he can join me and take part in most of those, or he can go wander around London. Not bad choices.

Last countdown… and possibly the best one -eleven days from now I leave for Spain. My goals for Spain are

• eat a lot
• drink a lot
• sleep a lot
• not check facebook or email

It’s going to be fabulous. Photos will probably be posted somewhere between one month and a year from now based on my track record.

Hmmmmm, still rendering. Think it’s time to try restarting the program or even the computer.

Max made it to Michigan / Back to Dance on the Brain

My cat made it safely to my parents house in Michigan. Thank you everyone who supported me in worrying about his well-being. I heard he was fine, healthy, but timid on arrival, which is not his usual MO but I’m sure he will feel more comfortable and be back to hissing at people left and right in no time.

Now I’m able to get back to working on my project, which means I have to figure out what I’m doing with my project. I’m using some cool video editing software, but it almost gives me too many options. I have such a learning curve adding this element but its fun at the same time. One of the things I’m having problems with is getting the video I’ve made to upload to either YouTube or Vimeo so you’ll just have to imagine what it might be for now.

 

Long time no post

So… it turns out I am not a very good blogger. However I’m going to try to do better. Do I get extra points for two in one day? (This one would have been the first but the vimeo gods were not interested in loading my video quickly.) Here is the result of my Research and Development project from March.

Kairos Chronos from Kelly Bowker on Vimeo.

If you clicked on that and are now a bit confused then let me say that yes, I am in graduate school for dance, specifically choreography. Throughout this past year opportunities have come up to work with video and I’ve enjoyed it so much that what I thought might be an experiment combining live performance with projection turned out to be a video installation. This was a huge departure from previous work I’ve made starting from the obvious fact that there were no live performers and not much “dance”.  Also this was the first work I’ve made which I didn’t think of as a performance. The video began rolling before the audience entered the space to give it that gallery/installation feel… and if you listen at the beginning you can hear me bossy-pantsing people into the theatre.

The next step will be my final project as a masters student. I’m still struggling to figure out exactly how I want to tackle it but I’ll write more about that in less than four months, I promise.

Research and Development

San Francisco was gorgeous, warm and wonderful. It was great to go home get to take the dance, yoga, pilates classes that I love and seeing all my friends! Thank you everyone who came out to hang out when I was there and I’m sorry to everyone I didn’t get a chance to see. It was such a whirlwind. I did a terrible job documenting my trip, taking a grand total of two pictures. Here’s the better of the two:

Now I’m back to school and back to trying to read a million books. It finally feels like I’m making art too though.

And happy Leap day to everyone!

Getting Older is Not All Bad

In the last month I feel like I’ve had so much information come my way that a lot of it has washed over me and gone on its way. Some bits have stuck though and I’m looking forward to getting back into the studio when I return from my trip. Two weeks free of classes, San Francisco here I come!

Starting January 9th I’ve been in Laban Monday through Friday. Being creative as a full-time job is  draining. Some of my classmates and I discussed reaching the point last week where we were no longer capable of really basic decision-making. I spent ten minutes in one store staring at the hair products as they didn’t sell the stuff I get in the US before moving on to another store where I stood stupidly in front of their hair products for another ten minutes. In the end I decided I had better just wait until I’m in the US next week since I can’t possibly choose a new product. Yikes.

And decision-making becomes even more important as my proposal for my final project is due in about a month. So San Francisco here I come, loaded up with books!

On a happier note I am on track so far with my New Years resolution of seeing at least one show a week. I would have missed a week but my wonderful classmates got me a ticket to see Cirque de Soleil for my birthday!

Royal Albert Hall

And, because it made me smile when I saw it I had to share: the hill in front of my school, demonstrating a rare occurence, sunshine!

Good bye London, please try to warm up a little while I’m gone.

Happy New Year! (one term down)

I have somehow survived my first term of grad school, and now I feel like if I could just rewind back to September I could actually do a halfway decent job of it.  I’m finally settling into the mode of being a student again. Basically at any given moment I should be doing school work. If I’m not reading, then I’m rehearsing and if I’m not doing either than I’m behind. However, despite those feelings I think writing and reflecting on what I’ve been up to is important as well so one of my New Years resolutions is to write more. The others:

Watch more dance

Travel more

It seems like resolutions are often about things you can’t do, trying to quit, etc., but this year I want to approach all my resolutions and life positively. Fresh start. I can’t go back to September and do it all perfect but I am ready for Monday and to attack this coming term with all my energy.

Note: I have no control over what apparel my nieces and nephew wear.

Assisting me in this venture will be my lovely new camera. (thanks Mom and Dad!) I’m looking forward to being able to post some photos that I didn’t steal or take with my phone. I’m particularly excited to use this panorama feature somewhere other than my family’s kitchen.

hanging out

Spoiler alert: my next big trip will be to San Francisco in February.